


Unearth

by CloveeD



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Buried Alive, M/M, Post-Movie 1: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Red String of Fate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 21:33:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13039860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CloveeD/pseuds/CloveeD
Summary: Newt Scamander's red string of fate pointed down at a shallow grave, and for the first time, he was almost not brave enough to dig for his life.





	Unearth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prosodiical](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/gifts).



 

~

 

The red string of fate seemed curiously unscientific for a nature's fundamental approach to life bonds, Newt thought at times. He was, despite his revolutionary role in the world of academia at times, a man of science. A scholar of nature's magical creatures, an ambassador of coexistence of differences. An invisible force mixing and matching people via a logic that creatures were not mated together with just seemed silly to Newt, really, and so, back in Hogwarts, he did the unthinkable. He tried working against fate. Just as an experiment.

 

Years later, when Newt gently turned Leta’s photo frame faced down in soft melancholy, he realized right there and then that the sadness was a realization of how silly _he_ was. How silly he was that he was fighting something that he hadn’t been giving a chance to. The more he had the bravado to think about it, the more he remembered – when he was little, Newt used to love sitting on Mother’s knees and listening to the warm reminiscing of Mother on how she had met Father at the other end of her red string.

 

“You would never know until then, sweet pup, how they needed you for all their life.” Mother said.

 

And then, Newt watched as Mother faded in illness soon after Father died. He had been too young to realize it, but now that he reflected upon the sequence of memories, he acknowledged a resentment in his wee days, a slow cry of pain and fear that one day, despite finding his ‘other half’, this would happen to them too.

 

It all seemed silly looking back on things. Theseus had always said Newt was the sensitive, over-thinking one, but really, it wasn’t as though Newt worried (that would be suffering twice). Newt was simply always on the edge of conventional minds, pushing for the why, the how, gaining not lands nor power but trust of creatures no man thought to give a chance. So it was odd, then, that he fought giving his supposed soulmate a chance all the way until this moment, when ice gripped Newt’s spine, tears stung his nose, sobs choke his throat, and Newt despaired.

 

He was wrong to resist, wrong to insist on doubting. He’d taken too long. His other half might no longer be able to wait.

 

~

 

His fingers bled as he dug at the  pebbled dirt – the glowing red of Newt Scamander’s red string of fate was leading right down into the soggy grave soil, and Newt might be too late.

 

His creatures had been the ones to nose their way over, Newt had been too focused on figuring out the next ship back to England. Given all that had happened with the Goldstein sisters, the MACUSA, Grindelwald, and Frank, Newt had been all but bursting at the seams with excitement, ready to add that next chapter to his book. The experience the creatures had in wizard and Muggle establishments was excellent reflection of what sorts of challenges coexistence with magical creatures was going to present, and Newt was all too ready to work out some solutions before those fearful and uptight magical creatures policy thumbers grumble among themselves the day Newt was going to publish his findings.

 

And then Jojo came tapping at Newt’s cheek with her beak, insistent despite Newt’s dismissive filling of ship ticket application form. He left his quill moving by itself, and glanced over, only to startle. Jojo was covered in mud. While the rain here was nothing soft and mellow like back in England, Jojo was usually very mindful of her fur, and Newt realized there had to be a reason for this state of urgency.

 

When he stepped out into the rain, he felt it. Stronger than ever, his own red string tugged, his ring finger ached as though it knew what Newt (silly, stubborn Newt) didn’t. Most people, Newt despaired as he dug, would’ve been paying attention to their red string in the first place, because it was considered the most life affirming and important aspect of a life not lonely. Newt was not most people, sadly. He was even furious at himself the moment he realized what was going on – why his red string was apparently pointing straight down at a mound of soggy dirt near the edge of a graveyard, where fresh earth had been disturbed recently, and Newt’s red string of fate, it glowed the way one only should in proximity of one’s soulmate.

 

He was sorry. He was sorry his arrogance and stubbornness against the conventional society blinded him to his other half, because now his other half might have just died. The moment Newt thought this, it was like nothing he’d survived thus far (not that battle in the dragons’ cave, not that time in the vampire thorn valley, not like when he negotiated South Asian head hunting tribes to pause as he salvaged a Tre-tre’s nest, and certainly not like having survived Grindelwald). Newt’s life --- what was left of it, was pointing straight at a shallow grave. And Newt was sorry.

 

Jojo made a soft trill, and through his tears and sniffling, Newt finally noticed. Jojo had brought the rest of her flock to him, and they’d all began digging. Even they realized the dire situation at hand, and they weren’t even human, not bound by the red strings of fate.

 

The rain pelted down on them all, and Newt wondered, at the lift off of his own fate, if this was it. Because of his own stubbornness, his soulmate was going to die before Newt even saw his face.

 

~

 

They uncovered a coffin, Jojo helped to break the lid.

 

Newt’s hex-lashed body instinctively flinched at the sight within. But he watched. His soulmate’s eyelashes were dark just like Grindelwald’s disguise. Soft and long and smeared by rain and earth.

 

There was no movement whatsoever, Newt sobbed. His soulmate wasn’t breathing.

 

Why was the point of the red string of fate if the moment Newt truly saw him, he died?

 

“You can’t. I’m sorry. I should’ve. I didn’t---Oh…” Newt hiccupped, terrified. He didn’t know he could feel this profoundly for a person --- a man, whose face had been worn by a fanatic dark wizard Newt’d just been fighting but two hours ago. He didn’t want Percival Graves to die.

 

“Don’t go. I only just met you.” Newt gasped, drenched at this point, fists gripping the soaked robe Percival Graves was in.

 

Newt put his mouth on the man’s lips, and breathed.

 

Percival Graves gasped to life.

 

~

**Author's Note:**

> ....I will come back and fix this mess, I promise. I thought I'd be done way early since I had the concept as soon as I got the prompt, but here I was, 40 minutes before deadline, screaming internally and typing like mad. The past month was really a circus. Nevertheless, I hope you like the idea!


End file.
